The Foot Soldiers of White Supremacy

good morning and thank you for joining us for another program in our series i'm rebecca belding a historian at our museum and i'm hosting today's show five years ago this week white supremacists brazenly marched through the college town of charlottesville virginia carrying flaming torches enchanting racist and anti-jewish slogans that weekend's unite the right rally turned deadly when one peaceful counter-protester heather heyer was killed and many others were injured self-proclaimed neo-nazis some of whom participated in the rally have drawn new recruits with a viral spread of conspiracy theories that stoke division today i'm joined by two guests to help us understand the history of these symbols myths and conspiracies and to learn how beliefs that once seemed fringe are fueling more visible hatred and violence today if you've watched our programs before you may recognize our first guest dr edna friedberg the regular program host and a historian at our museum edna has extensively studied and written about the holocaust era roots of the violent events in charlottesville thank you for trading places with me today and for sharing your expertise with the audience good morning edna good morning becky good to see you nice to see you i would also like to welcome david e mills a partner at the law firm cui llp cooley llp excuse me david was part of a team of lawyers who sued the planners of the unite the right rally with cooley donating its services pro bono on behalf of those who are injured in charlottesville the 2021 verdict found that the organizers of the rally were indeed part of a violent and racially motivated conspiracy david thank you for bringing such unique perspective to our conversation good morning good morning thank you for having me so edna let's begin with you the racist and anti-jewish violence on display in charlottesville shocked many of us it became a defining moment showcasing the mainstreaming of white supremacy in america and so my first question is really a personal and a professional one as a as a holocaust historian as a daughter of a holocaust survivor what were you thinking and feeling at that time watching this personally i was feeling a lot of disgust it was very very distressing um as you mentioned my father was a holocaust survivor my grandparents were survivors but even more than that just the setting of charlottesville university of virginia for people who've not been there is situated in charlottesville and i grew up in a college town a large state university very much like charlottesville with a small tight-knit jewish community my dad was a professor there and so i could kind of picture that scene and how it's usually a really tranquil place with a lot of diversity and then when i heard on the news that on the jewish sabbath on shabbat the rabbi and congregants had to slip out a back door taking with them their torah scrolls including one that had been salvaged from a destroyed jewish community during the holocaust that they had to take it out for safekeeping it was terrifying and i just was actually so relieved that my dad didn't live to see that day when people would be so brazen but on a professional level obviously i looked at it through some different eyes and saw many echoes of the history that i study every day many of the symbols the chants the use of torches for marching through the city were deliberately chosen to be copycats to try to mimic what the nazis had done in the 1930s and then finally there was the extra resonance and the extra hateful resonance of doing this in the american south where fire reminds us nights of fire bombs and lynchings events that were designed to direct terror at black residents of the american south so there were all these different layers that added up to a very very disturbing weekend well let's take a second to remind our audience of some of the things that edna just described what the scene looked like in charlottesville five years ago tonight you have probably already seen this footage before but just as a warning it is really jews upsetting not replace us jews will not replace us [Applause] [Applause] i always have to kind of stop and take a breath after watching stuff like that um david i turn to you now so unite the right represented a rare collaboration among these white supremacist groups what were they trying to accomplish with their rally and why did they choose charlottesville yeah i've seen that clip many times and it still takes my breath away as well this this really was an extremely unusual alliance of white supremacist groups that gathered in charlottesville ostensibly to protect to protest the removal of a statue of confederate general robert e lee from city park but as we learned over the course of time their true purpose was to galvanize their movement through a weekend of confrontations violence that would send their message more widely and and keep moving forward with their goal of normalizing violence and hate speech two of the people who organized the unite the right uh weekend were also university of virginia alumni so they knew the campus very well and they saw this as an opportunity to use the city's progressive decision to remove that statue as an opportunity to turn charlottesville into a battleground for their own purposes really the permitted rally that they had set up for that weekend was scheduled for saturday at noon but the organizers actually choreographed in a nighttime torchlight march on friday night without a permit and as edna described that that torch march deliberately echoed the pageantry of events one might have seen in nazi germany in the 1930s and that night to maximize the terror effect rather than walk along a public road to their destination they took this small army of people which was three four hundred men mostly white men with uh torches lit chanting extremely loudly on an indirect route before leading through the heart of the campus at the university of virginia one of the witnesses at our trial diane decosta is a fourth year student at uva she's black and jewish and she testified about being trapped in her room that night with only one door that opened up to where the nazis were marching and chanting they were so loud she could hear their chance of jews will not replace us and blood and soil which is another common nazi slogan from the 1930s she heard that several minutes before they even arrived in front of her room and she was so fearful for her life that she hid a necklace that she wore that had not had a jewish symbol on it because she was afraid that some of the nazis would come into her into her bedroom uh the march ended at a statue of thomas jefferson the third president and himself a slaveholder where about 20 counter protesters who had heard about this event they held hands in a circle to protect the campus but three or four hundred white supremacists attacking them with their fists and torches one of their leaders richard spencer a prominent white nationalist who speaks quite frequently he claimed victory at that time just before the law enforcement cleared the area several of those counter protesters who were there surrounding the statue were injured two of them ended up as plaintiffs in our case i remember just watching it on television and being absolutely horrified i can't imagine how terrifying it must have been to to be there to be one of the counter protesters to be diane in a room um i want to take a second and thank everyone who is joining us today thank you for joining us from canton new york i think that's probably one of the teachers that we work with um who's always up there in canton watching us from shreveport louisiana houston texas seattle washington and welcome to our international viewers we're hearing from people in argentina in colombia and in canada welcome everyone so the nighttime spectacle on campus though was not the only horrifying moment that weekend david as you said there was a permitted rally the next day and that was meant to be the main event a large-scale protest in a city park after the racist display on campus friday evening in confrontations with counter protesters white supremacists converged on the park in riot gear on saturday they charged at counter protesters using flagpoles and shields the virginia governor declared a state of emergency before the unite the right rally officially began and police tried to clear the park but as we know that did not stop the violence in downtown charlottesville james fields who was a foot soldier in the movement used his car as a weapon mowing down the crowd killing peaceful counter protester heather heyer and injuring many others so we have just shown a lot of images of what that day looked like we watched the film um edna i want to step back and ask you if you can explain the origins of some of the symbols that were chosen by the charlottesville planners sure these planners were deliberately mimicking um sort of stylistic things that the nazis did their drama they were not particularly original if we remember anything from that night and from that weekend it's probably the torches the tiki torches that they were marching with and it's really difficult to overstate the centrality of fire and flame to the nazi regime as a prop that they used they used it in many parades in party rallies including the festivities when hitler was named chancellor of germany and we're seeing compilation here of historical footage from several nazi events in the 1930s in which we can see how the fire has a sort of hypnotic quality to it i would encourage our viewers to put yourself into the mindset into the the eyes of a jew in germany watching this kind of event in the community you get the the sense that the ideology is spreading uh literally unstoppably almost like flames um but it's much more than the fire the coordinators of the unite the right rally also deliberately borrowed over and over again from the myth of so-called aryan heritage that was so prevalent in nazi propaganda we see here a poster this is not from the nazi era this is from five years ago to promote the charlottesville gathering shared by a group named vanguard america and anyone who has ever seen nazi posters will be struck by how similar the aesthetic is as in this historic image idealized young white germans healthy athletic supposedly pure and they were intentionally copying that style so i know edna that there was a lot of familiar nazi imagery in some of the posters promoting the event you just showed one but there's one in particular that i'm hoping that you can help us decode so this is a promotional poster again designed to recruit people and it speaks to who the audience is for this event that they are the planners are sending out um direct uh kind of coded messages or dog whistles if you will to speak to people who will recognize what they're looking at so for example the location of the rally on saturday it's intentional that they call lee park as david had mentioned earlier the city council had just renamed the park rather than having it named as an homage to confederate general robert e lee they had changed the name to emancipation park to commemorate the ending of slavery in the united states in the 1860s so they're deliberately rejecting that and calling it by its old name but graphically the eagles that you see towards the center are meant to recall the german imperial eagle even the color palette with the bold red and the white and the contrast deliberately echoes the color palette that were used in nazi posters and at the bottom are various emblems including confederate statues and then um what looks like an army of people marching so this has a lot of things going on in one poster all of which are supposed to appeal to people who glorify and admire the nazis so david edna mentioned the army at the bottom this poster is an invitation to join this army to be part of something that to the audience of this poster was something that seemed important um how did the poster come up in your trial well we we know that this poster in particular was influential to james fields the fellow who drove his car into the crowd of peaceful counterprotesters during the trial we introduced this into evidence uh this was a re he retweeted this poster on his own twitter account so he did his part to essentially recruit more what we've been calling foot soldiers to the cause you know fields drove his car overnight from his home in ohio to participate in this weekend he didn't get there in time for the friday night torch march but he was texting his mother the whole time and and he uh had received photos of what that march looked like on friday night and he texted those photos to his mother proclaiming his pride in the movement and associating himself with the other people who were there and participating in carrying torches he did join in time for the saturday event uh and he marched in uniform with vanguard america so just to remind our viewers james fields is the white supremacist who murdered heather heyer right um so it it seems david like the organizers are kind of faced with a challenge because they want to instigate violence on one hand and on the other hand they're using and going to great lengths to disguise those aims they're using this kind of code that edna was talking about um i'm wondering what you can tell us since you you know were part of discovery you were part of the trial what did you learn when you got into their behind the scenes communications well there was there was a lot of work by a large team of lawyers from three different firms that helped put this together and we got access to a social media and gaming platform called discord uh the planners of the unite the right weekend set up invitation only channels on discord and they use those channels to plan the unite the right weekend that's where we found conversations among the organizers that they of course at the time thought would be maintained in confidence and secrecy but they part they communicated amongst themselves and with ordinary participants and over that channel they provided information arranged transportation they even set the dress code uh the dress that they at least for some of the groups that were attending uh that they chose was khakis and a white polo shirt which you might think of as clothing worn by you know plenty of american men uh but in this case when it's worn by dozens of men marching in military uniform with leaders shouting military orders and marchers chanting and carrying banners and shields they appeared deliberately and acted as a like a quasi-military force james fields wore the same uniform during the morning on saturday which means he did get the message about the uniform and he was given a shield by the white supremacist group vanguard america which is the group he marched with that day and you know you talk about the dublicity among other communications that we found on discord organizers sent out the word to participants not to bring obvious nazi or clan symbols like swastikas specifically to avoid alienating the general public instead they had their participants bring things like flagpoles shields pepper spray that could be used as weapons in violent confrontations but while maintaining the ability to later claim that they were only meant for self-defense uh they planned in advance to trigger counter protesters into violent confrontations and then overwhelm them with greater force so that the protesters could claim self-defense but actually engage in the violence that they wanted this technique of of baiting or triggering by the white supremacists was the subject of expert testimony that our team introduced at the trial another term with historical roots that organizers and participants bragged about was gassing the jews this referred at least in this situation this referred to using tear gas actually pepper spray on jewish counter protesters which we saw a lot of that weekend we have a comment in here from mona who's watching from hunterdon county in new jersey who says that her son-in-law was at the rally in charlottesville and leapt onto the sidewalk as he heard and saw james fields presumably james field's car uh roaring down the alleyway and thank goodness he was safe and and obviously mona we share in our gratitude that your son-in-law was safe um it was such a brave thing for him to be down there and really terrifying um and dangerous for the people who were counter-protesting um edna earlier we saw the footage of the white supremacists gathered on the uva campus we heard them chant jews will not replace us which is a phrase i don't like saying out loud um but so that language is clearly very anti-semitic but the replace us part also relates to a very long-standing conspiracy theory that might be a little less familiar to many people um can you explain the replacement theory yeah so as david said and i don't want to gloss over that last photo we just had where they were talking about gassing the jews um many of the marchers in charlottesville had genocide on their minds but the ones that one that they were worried about is ostensibly the genocide of themselves uh this so-called replacement theory some racists also call it white genocide and it's some kind of bizarre idea that white christians not only in the u.s but also in europe are at risk of being outnumbered uh by non-christian people by people with brown skin and that they will be eventually wiped out because of some kind of demographic battle against them uh we can see this uh theory the replacement idea clearly articulated in another poster for the unite the right rally again with the aryan aesthetic that we discussed earlier on the left is you will not replace us but there's a call to action saying this rally is a pivotal moment for the pro-white movement in america so making people feel that there's an urgency for it and that they are at risk uh the replacement theory is fairly recent in that wording actually comes from france in the last 10 12 years but it confines combines much older forms of hatred of anti-semitism and other forms of racism within the replacement theory jews are somehow pulling the strings of black americans and also of immigrants who in their thinking then threaten the right white race by outnumbering them and in that way replacing him um but the theory also again has roots in history the nazis consistently portrayed jewish people as a threat who were scheming and manipulative and wanted to undermine german undermine germany and that they had powers we have many many items in the museum's collections that illustrate this nasty portrayal of jews one that we can show now comes from 1941 yugoslavia which was german occupied but that's why it's written in the cyrillic alphabet and here we see a jewish puppet master quite literally pulling the strings of stalin and churchill the soviet and british heads of state who were allies in the war against nazi germany i want to be clear though that replacement theory you know that's kind of innocuous sounding language but it's much more than a theory it can have deadly consequences and unfortunately has spurred people to commit violent acts including just a few years a few months ago pardon here in may where in buffalo new york an 18 year old young man is charged now with murdering 10 people at a grocery store investigators have found that this alleged killer targeted this particular community in this particular spot because he wanted to murder as many black people as possible and in content that he had posted online he quoted a call to action which is very popular among white supremacists on all different platforms it's known as the 14 words and i quote it with some reluctance but it says we must ensure the existence of our people and a future for white children and this is a through line that we see in many many white supremacist chat rooms and social media these kind of racist slogans show that there's this twisted idea motivating and feeding deadly violence and again it's the kind of code words that signal to like-minded people hey i'm one of you and we are engaged in this battle together i i'm going to ask you to talk a little bit more about the history of this theory um because you mentioned that the the actual phrase the great replacement theory comes from france but that's not where the ideas um as you mentioned the ideas are much older than that um like so many modern white supremacist conspiracies the replacement theory has these historical roots that go on much longer and i know from my research that there were americans who bought into this in the early part of the 20th century can you please tell us about one of these americans whose writings caught adolf hitler's attention even before he became the leader of germany yeah i mean lest americans feel too comfortable here and like we're just drawing on some kind of horrible racist import from germany there was plenty of cross-pollination across the atlantic during the 20th century of these kind of white supremacist ideas madison grant was a person who did other things other than hateful things he was an american conservationist who was central to the creation of the bronx zoo in new york and he moved in prominent social circles um kind of the same circles as president teddy roosevelt but his concerns on a biological basis about invasive species in the natural world were closely tied to his views about human beings as well madison grant believed that the united states the white united states that he valued was being polluted both by black people and by certain types of immigrants for his mind particularly european jews were a toxin that was invading our society uh grant supported for forced sterilization and he lobbied very actively for immigration restrictions that would somehow preserve the dominance of what he and his comrades called the nordic race he was an official of a group called the immigration restriction league and they were among many who lobbied for a law uh that a bill that eventually became a law in 1924 that made it much much more difficult for people to enter the u.s it set quotas on the basis of national origin this is germane to our history because that law was still in effect in the 1930s when jews were desperately trying to flee nazi persecution in europe and it made it almost impossible for them to find safe haven in the u.s um one last thing i want to say about madison grant is we know for a fact that uh hitler and other nazis were aware of him and saw him as a like-minded person um grant's book the passing of the great race originally published in 1916 was later found in hitler's personal library and this is actually the copy the german language edition that was in hitler's library this particular book is now held at the library of congress in washington yeah i like what you said earlier about this cross pollination i i want to make it clear that hitler is not being inspired by madison grant they are drinking from the same kind of hateful well that um is happening both in the united states and in europe these hateful ideas of trying to make race science a thing um trying to prove that some races are biologically better than others and that is still the same thread that inspires white supremacists today um we have a message from a viewer named jeannie who says i find it more and more difficult each day to tolerate such horrific beliefs we must teach the opposite our children must learn about our past to form a decent future we totally agree with eugenie and and hope and are glad to see that you're turning to programs like these to learn more about our past david i want to bring you back into the conversation uh we have another message from a viewer named barbara who wrote young nazis on parade mimicking hitler and his followers chanting anti-semitic slogans where were they groomed with all this hate so that's a great question and i know that there is a witness in your trial a former white supremacist who testified about how she and members of her group recruited new members by trying to present this kind of innocent clean-cut image to society that you alluded about a little bit earlier and i'm wondering if you can tell us a bit more about her sure samantha frolick was her name is her name um and one of my colleagues took her deposition and was able to play it at the trial she had joined the now defunct far right extreme extremist group identity europa in december of 2016. she initially joined because her boyfriend was a member and she wanted to impress him she said she saw it as an opportunity to learn about her european heritage which was how the organization actually presented itself to the general public within a few months she was given a formal job to recruit new members became the women's coordinator and membership coordinator and in this role she actually screened hundreds of potential new members her job was to weed out believe it or not to weave it weed out anyone who looked like a stereotypical neo-nazi who might ruin their state late straight-laced public image so let's listen for a second to fro like describe what members of identity europa were instructed to do to be accepted by society and to appeal to potential new members i mean optics were paramount to i.e getting their message and branding out again make sure that when you're interviewing someone make sure that the room they're in looks clean make sure that they're you know they look like they take care of themselves if you're out in public or in a rally you know speak with eloquence don't use racial slurs in public don't say any nazi rhetoric in public where slacks and loafers wear dresses look feminine don't use unnatural hair colors it was very strict they wanted to look presentable i would say it was like being wolves in sheep's clothing so it seems like they're recruiting with this false front but once you're in there's this in-group code that members understand so kind of like the poster that we looked at earlier there are symbols and signs that you if you were in this group if you were inculcated with white supremacist imagery you would recognize these symbols for what they were but it might seem innocent to the outside world edna i'm hoping that you can explain some of these lesser-known symbols the ones that might not be as readily recognizable in the mainstream as explicit nazi related visuals sure let's uh pull back some of the camouflage here one of the symbols embraced by today's white supremacists and seen as a more palatable alternative to the swastika which really you know doesn't have a lot of currency in our society to say the least one of the symbols that they use instead is called the sonan rod it's originally a norse or celtic symbol we can see it here on display in charlottesville on a large flag in this case from a texas-based white supremacist group during the nazi era the black sun wheel which is another one of its names was one of the symbols adopted by the ss and we're seeing here photos from a place in germany called weevilsburg castle which was a location commandeered by heinrich himmler who headed the elite nazi guard the sun wheel appears here at the center of the tile floor you can see that graphically it even reminds me at least a little bit of the swastika and that it kind of has this forward motion and the angles but himmler and many other nazis were deeply interested in norse mythology and they used its symbols to help legitimize the nazi's false claims to some kind of ancient aryan past using these lesser-known symbols again is a way of making communication more palatable to the general public but as a it also has the added advantage of seeming like um some kind of secret communication with followers who if they recognize it it's like a wink and a nod we know what's really going on here and we're in the secret society and um we are together in its language yeah um we have a comment from tony um kind of echoing back to a little bit earlier and and reinforcing what we were talking about earlier in the program um tony describes himself as a former white supremacist and he now works to de-program others who have also left the movement and he said that we were exactly right that some of the techniques david described including baiting counter protesters was exactly what he and his friends were doing in the 1980s and 1990s they would try to attract violence and then very enthusiastically respond to anybody who was trying to fight back um so thank you so much for joining us tony and thank you for the work that you're doing so david so despite all of these efforts to conceal their mission samantha furlock also described identity europa as a violent neo-nazi organization in her testimony can you share how this underlying nazi ideology and beliefs really motivated the members of identity europa sure and i would say identity europa is one example of of several large uh uh anti-semitic uh and uh white white supremacist organizations that are similar and use similar techniques they're very careful at least identity europa was very careful to portray itself in this sanitized version uh that ms frolic described to the public but she testified that in private gatherings the members of the group would let their guard down and they would openly share their nazi beliefs with one another and and one they were very much inspired by hitler and nazism specifically and they wanted to coordinate and execute a long-term plan uh that would spark what they called a whole a racial holy war or rehoa in order to create a white ethno state uh one approach that miss frolic described would involve escalating violence over the course of time physical violent confrontations between white people and every other race where only white people would would survive these confrontations this would be this would it seem that this would be accomplished through a series of escalating violent confrontations like charlottesville that eventually would lead to normalizing the concept of violence normalizing hate speech against non-european white people and the white ethno state itself which seems to have various iterations but the most common i heard about during trial preparation was a state that would be organized and run by and for white people where non-whites could potentially live but would not have the same rights as the white people of european descent let's hear directly from frolic again as she describes how her group and others liked it like it justified using any means necessary to try to achieve their goals to be pro-white you are anti-everything else there's this narrative in the alt-right that you're a victim that you're being beaten down and brow beaten for just existing and all of these things and the belief is that why people need to fight back the belief is that white people need to take care of themselves and be ready for this war that everyone thinks is going to happen um i mean it's just it's just inherently violent to think that people are sub-human means that it wouldn't be murder if you killed them because they're not even human that's violent and unfortunately it seems like there are some white supremacists who have taken on violence um and edna in in the five years since the deadly unite the right rally many of us are still obviously quite disturbed when we see white supremacist symbols out in the open or hear of violence that are that's motivated by these racist conspiracy theories but many of us aren't that surprised anymore um can you remind us of some of the events that have happened over the past five years that have been fueled by white supremacy so this mindset and this deliberate um provocation of violence is nothing new it just seems to be more out in the open and brazen in the last several years i do want to note that we keep talking about white supremacists uh but that anti-semitism hatred of jews is at its core um one former white supremacist that i talked to or white nationalist as they sometimes call themselves told me that without hatred of jews there would be no movement and we can see that for example in an attack that took place a little more than a year after the charlottesville events this time in pittsburgh pennsylvania when on a saturday the jewish sabbath a man armed with a semi-automatic weapon attacked the tree of life synagogue and he murdered 11 congregants in their sanctuary of prayer and wounded six others including four policemen this killer later told police that jews were and i quote him committing genocide um against his people so a direct invocation of the kind of uh replacement paranoia that i described earlier this particular murderer had heard about an american jewish social service organization that was helping immigrants uh to integrate and to settle into new homes and he said that they were helping people who were invaders we mentioned earlier about the killer in buffalo or the alleged killer in buffalo who was also motivated by similar ideas but let's be clear these are not ideas or crimes that are confined to lone actors during the attack on the u.s capitol on january 6th 2021 many of these same symbols and ideologies were on full display as we see here in this man wearing a camp auschwitz sweatshirt uh clearly a holocaust denier and someone inspired by nazi germany um you know this was not everyone who was present on january 6th but they felt comfortable there people who held that idea and were emboldened uh to agitate and become destructive and violent at the seat of american democracy so people are less shy things that may have previously existed in the shadows of society are now really out in the open and emboldened what is most troubling to me secondary of course to deadly violence though is the way that it's being legitimized by some political candidates and even elected officials at both the state and national level who are appearing at conferences um formally showing themselves willing to share a stage with groups like these at events and having no shame to be associated with their voices so this is a slow very strategic deliberate mainstreaming and normalization of groups who glorify uh the nazi genocide against the jews and are proudly and unapologetically portraying themselves as the inheritors of that history yeah that's a really important point um i used to think maybe maybe i was being naive but i used to think that there was this universal agreement that yes anti-semitism anti-semitism is a massive problem that's something that we need to focus on um but at least everybody kind of agreed that the holocaust was wrong the genocide was wrong and so the mainstreaming of some of these organizations that that are glorifying the nazis and glorifying the holocaust um are just terrifying and something that i at least when i was becoming a historian was not necessarily prepared to deal with we have a question from a viewer named eric that i think makes a lot of sense to stick here um he's asking that he's saying that versions of replacement theory and whitewashing of u.s history are seen in political movements today and how do we recommend teaching against that ideology um edna i know this is something that you give a lot of thought about um what what advice do you have for any teachers who might be out there so it's i would say start with the kind of um pullback of the curtain that we're doing here today encourage students to not be suckers for the propaganda i'm a mom of teenagers i know there's nothing that they like less than being uh tricked or duped help them to recognize when there are these symbols what they really mean what this seemingly um maybe appealing language or kind of neutral language is actually camouflaging what is it hiding and most people are not extremists most people are not violent racists you have to be taught to be that as well and that they aren't seduced um by the facade that's being presented but to see what really its true aims are and not to be confused that's where i would start yeah i would also you know there was a facebook live program that you hosted back in january 2021 about the need and the narrative and the network that is fueling people who are inclined to join those groups and i have gone back to that program multiple times um just to educate myself uh when these kinds of questions come up why are people making the choices that they're making um so i would also advise going back and watching that program if that's a question that you have um you know obviously these these um acts of violence are continuing just a few months ago police interrupted what could have been a very violent cr uh clash that was organized by white supremacists in idaho um edna one more question for you can you tell us a little bit about the group that was allegedly behind that planned riot sure so in this case the the target um or the goal was to provoke violence around a gay pride parade uh taking place in the state of idaho um thanks to good police work and alert surveillance they discovered a group of men dressed in a slightly different uniform this time navy polos and khaki pants they discovered them inside a rented truck again carrying what we now recognize is kind of telltale shields and other types of riot gear and eventually prosecutors charged more than 30 of these men with conspiracy to riot uh many of them were wearing hats with a logo associated with a group called the patriot front which is another one of these white supremacist racist groups affiliated with some of the planners of the charlottesville rally while we cannot be sure exactly what they had planned it's online propaganda the group's online propaganda is not subtle at all it includes the phrase embrace violence so this is one case where thankfully law enforcement was able to disrupt this their plans but um it's something that is uh seething that's simmering below the surface and is dangerous well and david at the trial you represented several individuals who were injured by um james fields when he intentionally drove his car into the crowd he was not a leader in any of these movements he was one of the foot soldiers he was a follower what did you find out about him that made him susceptible to carrying out such a violent act that's a good question and uh goes to a lot of what edna was talking about which is when people don't have alternatives healthy alternatives they turn to groups like this to find meaning and association james fields was a true believer he went to charlottesville convinced he was contributing to a vital cause for his race uh he understood that that necessarily included violence that was a critical component and we saw that in his own tweets and other other social media postings he was a dedicated adherent to hitler and nazism we showed this photo from his bedroom at the trial which is quite haunting it was a shrine to hitler and nazism you may not be able to see it from this photo but he also had a a nazi flag on his wall he he committed crimes obviously and was tried as an individual for murder and attempted murder he was sentenced to more than 400 years in prison but he was not alone actor that was part of the challenge of our trial was to show that the organizers of charlottesville conspired to ensure that the participants in their event were focused on a common enemy and that the outcome was violence uh they were trying to recruit others who would help carry out that violence and and you know james fields was exactly the kind of person they were looking for the fact that he drove into a crowd of what was obviously counter protesters based on what they were wearing and and the signs that they were carrying the fact that he drove into that crowd that particular weekend was not a coincidence this was his contribution to the common goal of the conspiracy and at the end of the trial the jury agreed with that and found that the leaders and james fields all participated together along with some other flip soldiers in a conspiracy to intimidate and harass based on race and ethnicity and they awarded more than 26 million in damages which i guess is a ray of of hope what what in my view what happened in charlottesville is as ed has really uh superbly described is it really a new version of an old a very old story there are modern tools to spread this propaganda and to recruit new soldiers but but the symbols and messages are taken seems to me directly from an 80 year old playbook so david i have one more question for you it's a question from a viewer named steven and i'm kind of asking you this as a lawyer and as someone who um participated in the unite the right trial um has thought about these big questions a lot stephen would like to know what is the line between free speech and hate speech in the united states and what have you learned in terms of what can be done to counteract these hateful and dangerous ideas and to reduce and eliminate the threat that they pose in our society the big question that is a big question it's a great question stephen and and it's been much litigated and it's a big fundamental part of our of our country and our constitutional system the more tolerance you have the more hateful speech you have to tolerate and we all we all know that the line the clear line is certainly in this case with violence inciting people to violence encouraging violence actually engaging in violence is where that line is clearly crossed and i think we do need to be my personal view is that we do it's it's correct to have a system that tolerates a hateful speech i think it's critical that we do that lest we find ourselves unable to speak against people that we think are completely wrong in their views and beliefs so here in our case the defendants actually did try to get the case dismissed on first amendment grounds and defended what they were doing as political rallying and free speech and the judge rejected that correctly in my view because what they were really doing was conspiring to commit violence based on race and ethnicity i really want to thank you both edna you have helped us understand the long history of these symbols and these conspiracies and it is so important to recognize them for what they are they are symbols and expressions of hate and violence so thank you so much for lending your expertise to us today happy to change chairs and david i mean thank you first for sharing your insights about the inner workings of the dangerous conspiracy but also we're really grateful to you and to the other lawyers for actually holding the white supremacist planners accountable and for offering a measure of justice to the victims so thank you for joining us thank you for having me the images and video we saw today still have the power to shock and that is a good thing when we look away when we stop thinking and feeling that is when we s when those who are seeking to mainstream violence and hatred succeed at our museum we often remind people that the holocaust did not begin with killing it began with words and as we've seen and as edna described in the five years since charlottesville dangerous conspiracies can quickly escalate from words into violence and it is incumbent upon all of us to remain vigilant to equip ourselves with knowledge and to stand against hatred and anti-semitism wherever we see it thank you so much for joining us today you

Channel: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Views: 14,922

Keywords: White supremacist, neo-Nazis, Charlottesville, antisemitism, conspiracy theory, white supremacy

Id: LOz1Bdq1t2M

Length: 48min 11sec (2891 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 15 2022